THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, MARCH 2, 1908. A SALUTARY LESSON.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9037, 2 March 1908, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, MARCH 2, 1908. A SALUTARY LESSON.

When Mr Pownall urged in Court on Saturday that "it would be a great hardship to inflict a heavy fine on defendant" because the latter "was a poor man," he put forward a plea which ought to be inadmissible in a court of justice. If it w«re recognised that poverty should justify leniency for an offence the poor man might grow fat upon the results of fraud. It is natural enough, however, for lawyers to use every effort to save their clients from just penalties. A plea for leniency is often put forward when an offender in a high position in life is convicted. Because he has hitherto been respected a long sentence should not be imposed, the accused's previous high social status making even a short sentence heavier than a longer one in the case of a poor man. Both pleas, nevertheless, are often found by the legal fraternity to be more or less efficacious. In the case before the :ourt on Saturday the defendant in question was convicted of selling putrid hams, which he admitted he had bought at 2Jd per lb and sold for Gd per lb. The admission that he had sold the hams which the evidence proved to be bad prevented the calling of more detailed evidence, and it is left to be conjectured how and where the porcine abominations were obtained. An interview which a member of our staff had with a well-known Wellington bacon-curer, however, throws some light upon the subject, and there appears to be little doubt that a large quantity of hams unfit for human consumption have been and are being hawked about the country dis- j tricts. In Saturday's prosecution \ the Magistrate inclined to the merci(ful, but the penalty imposed was

sufficiently high to be a salutary lesson to vendors of bad food. There is some satisfaction, too, in knowing that the auctioneer who sold "the hams—for the authorities have good reason to believe they were sold by auction in Wellington—is to be proceeded against by the Health Department. On the same day the hawker was penalised for selling bad hams, the local authorities seized several sacks of oysters equally bad, and a prosecution is to follow. It be hoves residents in these days of high prices for all commodities to closely scrutinise any that are offered for sale at ridiculously low figures.